The present invention generally relates to the field of computer data storage and retrieval, and more specifically, to identifying groups of users that are likely to be interested in particular topics.
Many organizations have information to convey electronically, such as invitations to join a particular group, product or service advertising information, and the like, and they would like to selectively provide the information to the users most likely to be interested in the information. More generally, it is valuable in many contexts to be able to determine the interests of particular users of electronic systems.
In some cases, users expressly specify that they have interest in (or, “have an affinity for”) a particular topic. For example, a user of a social networking system might specify approval for (e.g., “Like”) the webpage associated with a general topic such as “Automobiles,” or with a specific topic such as a particular car model (e.g., “NISSAN LEAF”). However, in many or most cases users only expressly specify their affinities for a small subset of the topics in which they are interested. Thus, for any given topic only a—possibly small—percentage of the users are likely to have expressly specified an interest in the topic, making it difficult for organizations to accurately identify the target audience for a given topic.